When Tony met Harvey who was actually Leo
by artemida'smoon
Summary: Leo was trying to lose the cops. Tony was trying not to jump out of a window while doing intern interviews. That is until a strange yet genius boy shows up. That's when things get interesting. A Leo-meets-Tony one-shot.


**You know the drill, don't own characters**

Getting chased by cops wasn't the best way to spend your Saturday afternoon, as Leo had recently discovered.

Well it was never a great way to spend any afternoon but Leo usually got into trouble with the federals during the working days of the week. He used Saturdays to break into McDonalds places and Sundays to get in fights with other runaways.

Sometimes he wondered what his mom would say if she saw him now. Running down a street of storage houses, his clothes greasy and not too well fitting, with two police officers yelling at him to stop. Using his skills with tinkering to pick locks and get by on the streets. Would she be ashamed?

 _Don't go there Valdez._ He chided himself in his head.

He wasn't even sure why the cops were chasing him. Maybe they'd recognized him as a runaway kid. Maybe there had been a camera in last Saturday's McDonalds. Who knew?

He'd been walking by a rather empty street with a coffee shop, where the two guys had been standing, each with a cup of cappuccino or something. He tensed around the police in general, a reflex born from being caught four times and dragged to four different foster homes. And then the guys had looked at him, stopped him and asked for his student card or something like that. He hadn't been paying attention since his nerves were on edge and his hyperactivness was starting to show.

And then he bolted.

Which was dumb, since if he hadn't he probably could've come up with some lie or excuse.

As it was he was hyperactive therefore sometimes made impulsive decisions.

And so currently he was dashing through the New York streets, trying to find a more crowded place to blend in. He was faster and more agile than the old guys, he knew. So, he turned and just for kicks yelled over his shoulder, "Come on fellas, catch me if you can!" in the most annoyingly childish way he could then turned a corner and found himself in a crowded area, full of pedestrians, rushing, talking on their phones, taxi drivers yelling at each other. Perfect.

He dashed through them and the crowd enveloped him.

Unfortunately, his pursuers were persistent and were soon joined by two more. Backup. Figures. That's what happens in all cop films.

He tried to run but all he could manage was speed walking. It was a two-way thing he supposed. Pedestrians slowed down the police and unfortunately him as well.

Once he was finally able to run he entered the first building he could. Bad idea in so many ways it was actually worthy of a medal.

 _And the award for this year's Worst Escape Plan goes to…Leo Valdez. Congratulations._

To begin with he could easily be trapped and found in a building. To continue the building was well guarded so when a 14-year-old, greasy kid runs inside, security immediately follows. Great more backup. Superb.

He also realized that it was impossible to blend in, since the people inside were just as fancy as the building itself. He wasn't even sure what building this was. A bank? Nah, too big.

Whatever it was he was still being chased and had few options. He saw the polished elevator's doors about to close and sped up. He made it just in time and the doors closed behind his cutting the security guards and whoever else off. Good. They'd have to wait now, the building was too high to take the stairs, and he could find an escape route in the meantime.

It took him a moment to realize there was a lady in the elevator with him. She stared at him as if wondering whether to press the emergency botton.

"'Sup?" he said and grinned because, come on, this was sort of funny.

The doors opened and he raced out leaving the woman to curse about Latin hooligans.

…..

Tony Stark had better things to do on his Saturday. Invent, party, eat, invent, buy a new car…invent.

Instead he was sitting in Stark Industries, office area, ready to slam his head into the table or throw himself off the top floor.

He hated interns.

Wannabe hims. Intelligent enough, come to candidate to be his protégés. The interview with each was required every two years but he'd never actually picked anyone.

Honestly the idea of young genius minds was fascinating and the interns would have been as well had they been more genius and less boring.

Most of them were from successful families, luxurious backgrounds, and ivy league universities. Some were younger than that which always gave him hope they may be a little less dull. No such luck.

They were all very…snobby. Now technically he hardly had the right to criticize them considering his own reputation but come on! He at least made for interesting conversation.

And the suits. Oh, the suits.

They were all dressed in black or grey suits that at the beginning had made him want to laugh, and by the 50th suit made him want to cry.

They all talked in the same monologue manner. They knew the theories and facts and could answer all the questions but they just lacked the…personality.

15 more.

The window was starting to look very inviting. And Pepper couldn't be having much fun either at the desk in front of the office. She had to greet all of them and ask them about their paperwork and what their names were and they probably made that boring as well.

He was waiting for the next guy to come in… Harvey Kyle. Ughhhhh.

Pepper's yell from outside disturbed his self- pitying thoughts. Maybe she'd finally snapped. He always wondered how much patience she had considering she worked for and put up with him.

Then the doors of the office burst open without the knock he had been expecting and in came a scrawny, tan kid with dark hair.

The boy had his back to him and was breathing heavily like he'd run all the way up the stairs. He was wearing a pair of loose jeans and a loose white shirt. He could tell the kid was young. Easily the youngest he'd seen today. The boy seemed to realize that he wasn't alone. He turned around and Tony noticed his expression looked like a crossover between smug and worried.

"You're not wearing a suit." Tony blurted out. The boy smirked in a mischievous way and then his eyes started darting around the room like a cornered animals'. His fingers seemed unable to stand still, drumming at his side, or combing his hair.

"Yah man, suits make me look like I'm going to a funeral. And they're itchy. And- ummm…Yah hi?"

"Harvey Kyle, is it?" Tony asked with the most interest he had expressed in the past 8 hours. Which technically didn't say much.

"Ummm, I- "somewhere in the distance Tony heard a police siren. "Yah, yah, that's me. Harley Kyle at your service. I mean Harvey. Harvey." The kid said in a rushed tone.

"Right, take a seat." Tony said and began the interview.

"It says here you go to a private school that specializes in quantum mechanics?".

"Quantum mechanics. Mhm."

"What makes you think you'd be good for this job?" it was a terribly cliché question to ask in an interview but it was required. He'd gotten several long speeches about as interesting as the growth of grass.

"Well I'm generally good at everything. I'm Le-Harvey Kyle, course I'd be good at it. I mean how could I not be?" the response was rather distracted as the Latino boy seemed fascinated by the window.

"Uhuh. Well there is your chance to prove it kid." he pointed to a section of the office that was set up as a sort of lab, with different materials and tools. "Go ahead, impress me."

Harvey was the first intern to not seem particularly concerned about impressing him, though his eyes flashed with excitement when he saw where Tony was pointing.

"You've got 30 minutes."

He didn't actually expect the kid to do anything impressive. He was just savoring the moment of a human being not wearing a suit. The kid seemed too young to be here though, and too distracted to properly concentrate on anything. But maybe it'd be funny.

He started reading a magazine and after what felt like ten minutes the kid said "I'm done.".

Tony looked at the clock. It had indeed been only ten minutes.

"You sure?" he asked more with amusement than anything else.

"Yup." Harvey said popping the "p".

"It's been ten minutes." Tony informed him.

"I had a bad day, okay?" the boy said defensively as if Tony had told him he'd been working on it for hours and ought to hurry up.

Well, he supposed he deserved some amusement. He got up and walked over to the lab table. On it there was a small shape roughly resembling a boat and a device that looked like a remote control. Harvey took the boat with one hand and the remote with the other.

"'Kay, so you have the control right and you just type in the command word and press here" the kid explained and typed in the word fly, "and then you watch…" The small boat made a lot of rumbling noise and began to escalate out of the boy's hand as Tony watched in amazement. "I could have made it to respond to voice command but you didn't have the wires for it."

Tony was still staring at the ceiling where the boat as still levitating. The bottom of it was like a jet-pack which is how it stayed in the air, but the fact a kid who looked no more than 14 had managed to do that in ten minutes…

"How did you do that?"

"Well, you know you have the circuit in the remote control and- ".

"I meant…in ten minutes."

Then he looked back to the table and noticed that in the 60 seconds he'd been staring upwards the kid had attached some rubber bands to a couple of small pipes and as he let them go they flew in a circle like helicopters then fell on the table.

The boy was a genius.

People could tinker for a hobby, but normal people could not make a miniature jet-pack in 10 minutes and helicopters from rubber bands in less than 60 seconds. He wasn't sure if he could.

"Well Harvey, I'd say you've done the impressing me part pretty well." Tony looked at the boy. Now there was a genius young mind.

The boy blushed. "Yah, about that…I'm not actually- "his reply was cut off by six policemen and three security guards barging into the office. The moment thy saw Harvey they yelled "You!" and the kid tensed.

"Gotta go, thanks for the interview, keep the boat!" and darted past most of the security, then crawled under the one blocking the door.

The men turned to go after him but they all rushed to the door at the same time so it was rather comical.

Hours afterwards when the situation had been explained, Tony realized that kids that went to private schools, and interviews with Tony Stark didn't usually have loose clothes and grease stains.

He also made several threats toward the police officers, considering the idea of sewing them for chasing off the best genius not-intern he'd ever had.

…..

As for Leo? Well Leo was hungry.

The day had been exhausting, losing the cops had been annoying, though on the bright side he got to tinker with some pretty advanced material.

Still, probably time to move on to some other city. He was quite sure all the New York police stations were looking for him.

You know…there was probably still time to fit in McDonalds in his schedule today.

If he was going to have more days like this he was going to need extra large fires.


End file.
